The iPhone’s native Notes app has received a multitude of changes in some of the most recent iterations of iOS, but one thing Apple always falls short of adding is a character counter.

Most of the text editors and word processors available today incorporate some form of fundamental support for character or word counting, and so it’d be nice if the Notes app fell into that category. Fortunately, a new free jailbreak tweak called countingNotes by iOS developer CydiaGeek can make it happen.

As seen in the screenshot example above, countingNotes adds a character counter to the navigation bar at the top of the Notes app. As you type from the keyboard, the character counter updates in real-time to unceasingly display how many characters you’ve typed.

One thing we noticed right off the bat is that countingNotes looks and feels just like a previous tweak release dubbed NotesCharacterCount by iOS developer hvyc, and perhaps it’s no coincidence; then again, this is just speculation.

The primary difference between the two is that countingNotes is certified to work with iOS 11. That said, those jailbroken by way of Electra can confidently download and install countingNotes without any risk of instability.

The need for a character counter in the native Notes app is undoubtedly subjective to how you use your device, and so your mileage may vary. One use case might be if you use the Notes app as a rough draft composer for apps that impose character limits, such as Twitter.